


To us

by WahlBuilder



Category: Mars: War Logs, The Technomancer (Video Game)
Genre: Birthday Fluff, Brotherly Love, Domestic Fluff, Family Fluff, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2020-03-20 09:53:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18990301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WahlBuilder/pseuds/WahlBuilder
Summary: It's a good day, and Sean feels blessed. In many ways.





	To us

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Modlisznik](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Modlisznik/gifts).



> With a dash of Sean/Zach/Andrew.
> 
> =*** <333

It is a quiet day, a day full of gentle breeze and light. Someone is sweeping a footpath with a broom. A wind chime tinkles its joyful tune. Ostriches coo in the pen on the ground level. The shadow of the crater wall lies translucent, like a veil, rounding corners, softening colors.

Sean feels blessed. Not in a religious sense, but in a sense of being present, connected, at peace. He understands what Tenacity means when he says that as long as he can wake up, he can do everything else.

Sean sits on a bench outside his workshop and drinks everything in. A fluffy silvery scarf is draped loosely on his shoulders.

There is always something to do — but there is rarely the urgency. People bring him all sorts of interesting things to repair or remake all the time: not technical things, like they bring to Zach, but shards and bits and pieces that they often mourn or don’t know what to do with but can’t throw out. It is always interesting to try to see a new shape, a new thing in something broken. Though he rarely does those things alone: Zach makes him all sorts of tools, and he needs Andrew’s expertise when it comes to colors (Sean admits that he is sometimes too cautious; Ophir has raised him in various shades of gray).

His two men are asleep, having returned early from a hunt and sneaked back into bed and cuddling to him, but he left them an hour later, and now he’s enjoying the moment he has all to himself. Not because he seeks isolation, but because… He’s here.

When he sees a familiar figure — though in still-unfamiliar clothing — walking purposefully towards their caves, Sean smiles and adjusts the scarf to lie in dramatic folds.

“I expected you’d come, _Tygřík_ ,” he says, then arches a brow. “Or should I say _Corvo_ , now?”

They don’t hug and don’t clasp arms, but they study each other for a few moments filled with comfortable silence.

Sean can’t get used to Mel wearing Noctian clothes — not because they sit wrong, but because he’s too used to seeing Mel in uniform (when he got to see him at all). Mel’s skin has a golden glow of someone who is outside a dome a lot, and of someone who is deeply in love, and faded Noctian azure gives him almost the signature look of the origins of Sean’s other closest brother. The grooved tattoo on Mel’s chin gives his face a fierceness. It is as though Noctis is returning Mel colors. Even the color of his hair. Sean thinks it would never be the handsome auburn he remembers too vividly, but it does have a red tinge again, as though the colorlessness was but concrete dust, now combed away.

He makes a spot on the bench, and Mel sits down, and for long moments they simply share space.

“How are yours, _kotek_?”

Mel never asks _How are you?_ They are defined by their people.

Sean stretches his legs, squints in the thin shadow. He wants to curl up right here and doze off, but the bench is too narrow — a good idea for constant renovations they are going through. Prodding, reshaping their space all the time, on a whim or because they need it. It’s good, to change.

“Plotting something, I think. There was much conspiring yesterday. I hope it’s not about me.”

“I hope it is,” Mel says beside him. Big and warm and relaxed. “I certainly won’t let you away this easily. I’ve brought you something.”

He looks down, at the tiled ground. He has laid each uneven tile piece himself, and there is still more ground to cover. “You shouldn’t have.”

“I wanted to. Indulge me, _kotě_.”

And a book is lowered onto his lap. It is bound in cloth of elegant gray, and a great tree is painted on the cover in white. By the strange branches, angular, as though broken, twisted in agony, Sean knows it is as one of the iron trees of Ophir. A pattern on the bole tells him that he knows this tree. It’s the one the core of his staff is made of.

This, in itself, would have been enough of a gift (enough to warrant grumbling at Mel a little), but he opens the book, and it is so much more.

His whole life spills onto his lap. There are drawings — uncolored, in graphite and charcoal, all gray — of himself, of his life’s story. His Academy years (a class on history perhaps, judging by his own enraptured face, — it must be the real history, not the official propaganda-poisoned course; they were so young), his initiation ceremony (fuck, did they get drunk after), his first deployment… Connor, and Ian, and Sam; the scenes of frankly dangerous ventures into the city with Alex and the suffering Mel who always got them out of trouble and covered for them with ridiculous excuses before Connor and Ian. Zach. Training and studying together, and the mantis… Sean himself and the mantis side by side, in the same dramatic pose. Another study, with him and a cat curled up. All right, he can admit to _some_ semblance. Him looking at Zach. Were they _that_ obvious?

The space between drawings is filled with Mel’s hand: lines of dialogue, quotes of profoundly beautiful poetry and profane songs, snatches of thoughts, field log entries, and more, more, in languages that Sean doesn’t recognize, weaving together, climbing over each other. He has never been good with languages, and he has to ask Mel about the meaning of some things that look like more poetry — and glancing at Mel (looking at him), he realizes that this is a part of the gift, too: an offering of an excuse to spend time together, over translations and over memories.

He looks further. Camp 19. Mary. The duel with Roy, with some… dramatic embellishments.

His face hurts from smiling. “Don’t tell me you asked him.”

“Oh, I did,” Mel says, laughter in his voice.

He raises both brows at Mel. “And you told him that…”

Mel smiles wide. It makes him look positively feral. “Oh yes, I did. The Gang’s coming for your ass, Seanek.”

“Fuck you.” He nudges Mel to the shoulder, trying to push him off the bench — but Mel only laughs and pushes back, and Sean grips the book to not let it slip.

They don’t hug and don’t clasp arms, but Sean lays his head on Mel’s shoulder.

“Thank you, _Corvo_.”

“Oh, you know. It’s my birthday, too, after all. And Dad’s, and Sam’s, and Zach’s, and many others. So I’m giving myself a family gathering as a gift.”

Sean holds the book close to his chest, feeling blessed.

“Happy birthday to us.”


End file.
